Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Stonehenge

Excerpt

I make no apology for adding yet one more item to the extensive literature of Stonehenge. No full account of this, our leading prehistoric antiquity, has been written for more than twenty years, a period which has witnessed a lively quickening of public interest in archaeology and a renewed onslaught on the problems of Stonehenge itself. The intermission of a year in the current series of excavations at Stonehenge has given me the opportunity of setting down the main results which have been achieved so far, together with a more general sketch of the archaeological perspective against which they must be viewed. I do not for a moment pretend that the conclusions here put forward are final, for an archaeologist would be rash indeed who was not prepared for even his most cherished theories to be rudely controverted by subsequent research. None the less, I am rash enough to believe that the interpretation of Stonehenge given in this book is sufficiently coherent and firmly based to warrant publication, even though the current work on the site is not yet complete. Future events will show whether this confidence is misplaced.

One of the principal occupations of my colleagues and myself during our recent excavations at Stonehenge has been the answering of innumerable questions put by visitors. Among the busy preoccupations of an excavation undertaken in full view of a numerous and by no means uninhibited audience, such questions are not always greeted with the warmth, or answered at the length, that they would frequently deserve under less harassing circumstances. I hope that this book will answer some of those questions; it cannot hope to answer them all.